


Some Riot

by Anothertroy



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: M/M, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-21
Updated: 2014-11-09
Packaged: 2018-02-18 05:57:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2337698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anothertroy/pseuds/Anothertroy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They'd all been saying weird shit lately, or just too much, emotions like the ley line, awake and bright and running close to the surface.</p><p>Gansey, Ronan, Adam, Noah, Blue. It's complicated and nobody will behave like they're supposed to. (Pairings are growing as it goes, because everyone loves everyone too much.)</p><p>ETA: This takes place after The Dream Thieves but doesn't follow the plot of Blue Lily - not yet, anyway, I don't know where it's going to end up :x So canon compliant up until the end of Dream Thieves, but not after that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. (I remember thirst)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [darkrosaleen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/darkrosaleen/gifts), [rattlesnakes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rattlesnakes/gifts).



_Things never stay where I put them._ At this particular point in time, Gansey felt this statement covered several things: his pen; a book of maps he had in any case meant to take back to the library (so perhaps in fact he had done that and then forgotten doing so -it wouldn't be the first time); something he'd been going to say; Adam; Blue; Ronan. Only one of these things, though, was in the room with him - the thing he'd been going to say was long gone - and was mocking him with its refusal to stay where he put it.  _Long-suffering_ , he thought, turning to look at Ronan.  _Langmód-ness._ "What?"

"It's in your other jacket."

"It's not. I looked there first."

"Here." Ronan drew a pen out of his own pocket and threw it at Gansey like a knife, end over end. Gansey tried to catch it and it hit him across the knuckles. "Sometimes," he said in resignation, "I think they sent you out of Greek myth purely to punish me for something."

Ronan grinned, sharp. "Well, yeah. I'm  _Corvus_." He looked up, through the ceiling, into the stars; it wasn't so hard to imagine. "Apollo shot the messenger."

"Who on earth does that make me?"

"Ischys, I guess. Harsh."

But not entirely unfair, if Adam was Apollo - and wouldn't he be, with the timeless lines of his face, the earth waking to and following his touch, the glorious sun in his hair ( _too much_ , Gansey thought at himself in alarm; Adam and  _glorious_ in the same sentence was definite further evidence of things not staying where he put them) - and Blue, then, was Coronis. He shook his head. "Wrong. I mean, I might be, but she's not - come on, Ronan. You can't see her putting up with that."

Ronan made a noise which could be taken for agreement - it was agreement, just, they weren't talking about this. Because Ronan had figured it out, in the twenty-four hours of total insanity that marked the end of The Kavinsky Chronicles and the beginning of whatever the hell they were doing now. Mission Magical Rescue Squad. Sometimes he felt like a 90s cartoon. He'd maybe figured it out before then, somewhere in the catalogue his brain made of all of Gansey's expressions, but there hadn't really been time to think about it. But afterwards, when he'd seen the look on Gansey's face as he watched Blue set her jaw, her shoulders, her whole self against what was happening, he'd had no choice. He'd wanted to be nasty about it, but really, he'd been just too fucking tired.  _So, Blue, then._ It's all he'd said, when they got back to Monmouth, and Gansey's eyes had gone so wide it would have been hilarious.  _No. It's not like that._  And when Ronan grimaced, because it  _was_ like that, Gansey had done a straight up double take, which would also have been hilarious.  _Oh. Sorry. I don't - it's like that, but I'm not going to do anything about it._

And they'd left it at that, because there were more important things. Touching on it now was broaching something; poisonous liquid spilling on dangerous ground. His own fault, Ronan knew. He could have chosen a different constellation to be. "No Noah in that one anyway," he said by way of concession.

"No. He'd always get left out. To hell with Greek mythology." Everything Gansey said had the potential to sound like a toast, so Ronan lifted an invisible glass.  _It could be visible_ , whispered a voice he was choosing to believe was just his own brain trying to make him hate himself, because the alternative was impossible and also exhausting, because Kavinsky was dead,  _you'd only have to reach out._ "Yamas," he said to Gansey, and  _fuck off_ to the voices in his head. _  
_

"What? Oh. Yes. Cheers." Something about Ronan had gone darker, just then, a third eyelid sort of thing that briefly made Gansey's blood rush unpleasantly in his ears. He touched the toe of his shoe to the pen on the floor and it rolled away from him. "You're all right," he added quietly, which was meant to be _are you all right_ , but apparently his words were just another thing that wouldn't stay put.

"Going to be." Ronan didn't question it, and his answer was a promise. They'd all been saying weird shit lately, or just too much, emotions like the ley line, awake and bright and running close to the surface. And Gansey would stop sometimes and stare at him like he could see right through his skin; he was getting used to that, too, in the way you get used to having a bullet lodged in your shoulder. Something that couldn't be removed without damaging you more. And he'd - done things. The other day when Gansey had been looking at and through him the same way he approached modern art ( _the intention is clear, and very beautiful_ , he remembered Gansey saying about Franz Kline - god, it felt like five years ago, twenty years -  _but I can't understand what I'm actually seeing. it looks like music._ ) Ronan had walked over to him, slowly, like he did in dreams, and Gansey had said nothing, just gone on looking, and Ronan had kissed him - dry, quick, curious. Formal, really, like you'd kiss someone's cheek. Gansey still hadn't said anything - hadn't done anything, pushed him away, hadn't even blinked in surprise.  _Dear_ _Abby_ , he'd thought hysterically as he backed away and left the room, _I think my dad might be on drugs._ _  
_

So this by comparison was veering towards normal, and Gansey nodded and said, "Good," like a teacher marking his work (someone's work, anyway) and that was all; the moment dropped, a trough in their current peculiar waveform. Ronan let it go. "Chainsaw probably stole your pen." It was an excuse, a reason to go into his ruined room and close the door, but Gansey didn't stop him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know what I'm doinnng or how many chapters of this there are going to be - I just can't stop watching these crazy, beautiful children orbit and adore each other, so I decided I had to write some of it down. I don't know where it's going! I hope you all enjoy the ride too, idefk :x
> 
> PS, I have literally no idea how to tag things on AO3 and it scares me - if you think something should be tagged or warned for and it isn't, please let me know and I will fix it. Thank you! Posting fic on the internet is a new and slightly frightening adventure for me and I don't want to get anything wrong :x


	2. You cut your teeth on the lack of answers

Noah didn't dream; he looped, like an early piece of experimental music - tape loops, cut and joined together and run in circles. He was used to it, more or less. When Gansey had awkwardly mentioned the whole replaying his death scene thing -  _we weren't sure whether you knew_ \- he hadn't been surprised except by the fact that they could see it happening. "I'm Schrödinger's Noah," he'd said to Blue once to make her laugh. "I only exist when you're looking at me." Gansey would have said  _that's actually not how Schrödinger's paradox works_ , but Blue had touched him thoughtfully on the arm, grinned, and asked, "What's it like to be quantum?"

"Pretty good, right now," he'd said, and meant it. He loved her ridiculously, devotionally, something that went far beyond drawing her name in condensation and off into mythical territory - he'd never be anyone's champion, but he thought he'd make a half-decent squire if it came down to it. And it wasn't exactly hard to picture Blue as a knight.

It was so  _easy_ around her - of course, she'd known him for the least time, so she'd taken the news of his death the most in stride. Ronan still made cruel jokes; Gansey was still sometimes painfully polite about it; Adam was weird about everything. Blue just linked arms with him and told him about her family, or her shift at Nino's, or a dog she'd seen. Once upon a time, he'd thought about meeting and marrying a girl like that - long ago, before he'd met a boy instead and the train had come off the rails. He _would_ have asked her out - he'd meant that - but there was relief in his not being able to, all the same; relationships were messy, alive, dangerous.  _Czerny._ He'd had to stop Ronan trying to pronounce it, because he'd just hear -

> _\- you wouldn't believe it if you saw it. I didn't think we needed another **home** **cinema**_ \- Barrington dragged the words out like they were stuck to his shoe -  _but there you are, now there's two._  
>  _You_ , Noah said without lifting his head,  _are a Valley Girl._  
>  Barrington's hand landed light against his cheek, a slap he couldn't be bothered with.  _I just meant we could have that Hitchcock marathon after all, but see if I invite you now._  
>  _You'll invite me._ The corner of Noah's mouth went up, pulling skin with it.  _Brandon Shaw._

And if they couldn't handle him re-enacting his murder, they probably didn't need to see the rest of that. Definitely didn't need to; he wasn't even sure they understood, except for Ronan, the only one who'd said a word. Alone in Monmouth, unrest in every movement of his shoulders and his wrists, he'd rounded on the empty room and spat out  _You could have done better, Noah. He was fucking worthless. You could do better now._ But under the circumstances, Noah wasn't sure that had really counted.

 

*

 

They had a puzzle box that translated things into a dream language, and Ronan had been attracted to Kavinsky. The two things were welded together in Adam's head, melted together - Kavinsky wanting Ronan, that wasn't relevant. But that Ronan had been looking  _back_ made so many things suddenly turn over and reveal themselves that it was like the box: a language he wasn't meant to know, handed to him without his ever having asked for it. Now there was too much to think about - magic in his veins, magic in his friends, magic bursting and blossoming time-lapse-like up out of the ground, and Ronan might have slept with Kavinsky. It made him feel raw and sour and like a poem he'd read once that had given him nightmares ( _seven of them pinned in blood by long, shiny tails, three of them still alive and writhing against the wood_ ). It was always Ronan people called a snake, but they were always wrong; he was the one who'd lived in the grass, knew how to hide, might strike in spite of himself.

They hadn't talked about it, and then they had.

> "Did you -" Adam let it drop, breathed in, lost his hold on it again. He had to know, had no right to know, didn't want to know. He did not want to know.  
>  "Did I?" The way Ronan looked at him was a dare; always had been, he thought, now, maybe. Maybe that's the way he looked at everyone. Maybe he was daring them all, too. It wouldn't have been out of character.  
>  "Kavinsky. Did -" He couldn't do it. Never one for saying how he felt; the words died in his throat, forced him to swallow them. He made a face, and Ronan's hand twitched, open and closed, sick and involuntary.  
>  "I don't know." Ronan never lied, and Adam didn't want to hear what was coming at all. "When I wake up, when I've been - I can't move for a while. You know. And I think. I think -"
> 
> It happened in reverse order, in that Adam stared at his hand first, then looked at the rough scratches coming up white on Ronan's arm, then felt himself do it, cold and pale and awful. Only after all of that did he get around to thinking  _I'm going to hit something_. "I'm sorry. Sorry." He felt wretched, but Ronan shrugged in a way he'd long since learned meant forgiveness.  
>  "Don't. I like - he's dead. It doesn't matter." And then, "Thanks."

The way Ronan had smiled at him then had haunted everything for days, solidified his thoughts into  _you want me, don't you_ and  _I think I want you too, but where does that leave us_ and their respective B-sides,  _but you're in love with Gansey and you always have been_ and  _so am I_. Which wasn't a new thought, so much. He'd always known his feelings for Gansey were a morass, and that the edges of admiration and attraction were blurred beyond definition there. He'd seen a thing on the internet once that said  _do I want to be you or be on you_ and he'd felt the sting of the truth of it, complicated but inarguable. Gansey was many things, including maddening and oblivious, misguidedly high-minded and occasionally just plain dense, but he was also beyond charming and handsome and the first few times he'd come to pick Adam up in the Pig, Adam had felt his heart overstretch itself and thought,  _I feel like a girl_. And then, after a couple of weeks, _Oh, I see._

It had been all right, because Gansey had no idea - and because Gansey did love him, with the same sunlit enthusiasm with which he also loved his car and his Welsh kings. It had never been in Adam's nature to trust warmth, or bright light, or places that seemed safe - he knew that was half the reason they fought so much, that he simply couldn't relax in the heliac glow of that much affection - but that didn't mean he didn't wish he could, and Gansey so desperately wanted him to that it settled the ache in his chest that whispered,  _what if_.

Only now, the light was dawning in Gansey's eyes too - about Ronan, first, but that wasn't any easier because it was happening right in front of him; he made sure that it was, he couldn't bear to leave the two of them alone. Ronan would throw out a joke and Gansey would fumble it, blink and stare at him like a new creature, and Adam would hallucinate him reaching out to touch Ronan, would see the whole thing - Gansey's hand landing on the back of Ronan's neck, twist, palm, skin, dart, kiss - but instead he'd just frown, look thoughtful, leave it. Adam wanted to scream, and at night when he fell into bed he'd think of them together and he knew that he was jealous, the acid kind that makes you do stupid, dangerous things. He'd never wanted Ronan like that, not before the dream language made sense of everything, had never looked too long at his throat where his collar rested easy against his skin, the way he had with Gansey - but now it was like a drone, the low sound of something working somewhere out of sight, a constant pressure on his senses.

Like the ley line; no less strange, no less demanding.

 

*

 

"I kissed her," Noah said moodily, and Ronan groaned, head rolling against the pillow. "I don't want to hear this, Noah."  
"Well, I can't tell anyone else, can I?"  
"Was she awake? Did you Casper her?" One of Gansey's books skidded across the floor and ran into the wall - by itself, and it didn't startle him any more, but he still sometimes had to tell himself that Noah wouldn't hurt them. Because clearly, if he wanted to, he could. "Not sorry."  
"She was awake."  
Ronan made a disgusted noise. "Am I the only one who's not in love with her?"  
"If she needed something, would you dream it?" Occasionally Noah's voice seemed to come from all around him, echoing, sound in a diving bell. It was weird.  
"I don't know."

Silence. "Noah?" Nothing. He'd gone again, then, probably. Ronan dragged his nails over his arm; his skin prickled, and he could still feel the marks where Adam had struck him, though they weren't visible any more. He tried to picture it, Noah and Blue - awkward, it must have been. They'd probably been laughing. Blue made Noah laugh a lot. Something nasty twisted in the bracken of his brain; when he chased it down and looked at it, it seemed a lot like jealousy.  _Really?_ he asked himself acidly, but he wasn't honestly all that surprised. _  
_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I STILL DON'T KNOW WHAT I'M DOING. I don't know what they're doing, either. I hope this doesn't seem completely pointless - I like watching them think, but I know probably most people would rather they'd all just get it together and make out :x Sorry about it :x


	3. never turn your back on it again

Gansey, master of compartmentalisation at all times except when he wasn't, was - he thought - doing a pretty good job of not thinking about Kavinsky. Or at least, of not thinking about Ronan-and-Kavinsky, which was an entirely separate issue from having seen somebody he knew die - a boy his own age, broadly speaking, whom he'd seen on and off every other day for two years of his life and had despised mostly without particularly knowing why. Gone up in flames, like something heroic. He couldn't pin down his feelings about it, though he recognised some of them as a sort of jealousy that made him remember being seven and trying to convince his mother to give him a Viking burial-at-sea birthday party. There was sadness, which made no real sense since he'd been disgusted by Kavinsky at the best of times; shock, still, that something so - so  _cinematic_  could happen in front of him and yet be so final; sometimes a low, sick pleasure he couldn't bear to look at - a terrible feeling, like satisfaction, but still hungry. Disturbing, but none of it intruded on his thoughts with any regularity. It was manageable.

But the time lost to his mother's party was more dangerous. For one thing, Ronan and Kavinsky aside it was already a shredded, terrible mess: in his memory, the fight with Adam spiralled up into the sky like some vast, thorned structure; the hollow of Adam's subsequent disappearance had an unreal, disconcerting quality like pottery slip or quicksand; his call to Blue held a sweetness he could not bear to revisit, the scent of flowers worn by someone loved and lost. A ghost fragrance, haunting those awful days. Adding more to it was always going to be precarious, but in a way, Ronan's hysterical explanation of the days he'd missed was merciful; long on cursing, short on details. 

The trouble was, those details were enough. It was strange, Gansey thought, how just a few words could make for an entire three-act play running through one's head -  _Ronan_ , that was his friend, lost boy, insomniac, sharp, dream magician and habitual teller of horrible jokes, brother, fighter, and then you added  _Kavinsky_  and that brought cars and tire tracks, fire and needles and a heavy, inexorable bassline, the memory of that molotov in his hand (and of Ronan watching him with it, Kavinsky watching them both), and then  _together_  - Ronan's shaved head in silhouette, Kavinsky's clever hands dealing out drugs like playing cards, a flood of cheap alcohol, the black lines of Ronan's tattoo laying flat against his back. And  _dreaming_ , the last word, ambiguous enough to give the play life: dreaming meant magic, meant somebody else - Kavinsky, fucking  _Kavinsky_  - seeing Ronan pull impossibilities out of his sleep and telling him  _more, do more_ ; meant the ley line (which Gansey tried hard not to think of as  _his_ , but it was at least  _theirs_ , god damn it); dreaming meant  _sleep_ , and he knew that Kavinsky had drugs for that, that it wasn't that Ronan had trusted him enough to uncurl his body in the passenger seat and close his eyes - this sleep was violent, forced - but that didn't help much because the end result was still Ronan with his bright eyes shut, defenceless, and opening his mouth to do it again, and again, and again.

It killed him to think about it, so he didn't. But when Kavinsky went up like a torch, become his own vibrant nightmare, part of Gansey's brain had detached itself and gone off somewhere quiet and he'd heard it think  _good - now I don't have to do it._  Which wasn't something he'd ever wanted to know about himself.

 

*

 

Ronan would - and could, and did, often - call Gansey oblivious, but that wasn't entirely the case. Not always the case, anyway. He'd be the first to admit that there was a lot he didn't  _know_ , but there wasn't all that much he didn't notice - he just wasn't completely in control of what his brain did with the information it absorbed. As far as he could tell, there was an automatic system in place that filed a large number of things in a cabinet marked 'we'll deal with this later', to which his access was restricted and which housed a random selection of problems, ranging from the question of what Maura thought of his clothes to his childhood concerns about nuclear weaponry.

As such, it wasn't that he'd never realised Ronan was devoted to him in a way that likely went beyond standard best friend parameters (or that the word  _devoted_  was an unusual first one to spring to mind about a friend in the first place) - his brain had simply made a decision along the way somewhere that he wasn't going to think about it until it became necessary to. And it had done the same thing with Adam, who would sit in the passenger seat of the Pig watching Gansey drive, eyes shuttered, expression closed; it could have meant many things, but Gansey was fairly sure he knew what some of them were. He'd been certain, though (before Blue, before everything started speeding up like a fairground Gravitron), that neither Ronan nor Adam would ever raise the subject; it had mattered much more to  _be_  who they were to one another than to talk about it.

His own feelings had been more obscure, but then they always were. He was fairly sure their family motto was actually 'never know thyself'.

But then Blue, a bird diving straight into the lake of them; then Adam, wrenching out of his grasp and remaking himself; then Kavinsky. All the locks on the cabinet had been blown clean off by that; now he  _had_  to think about it. Now he could hardly think about anything else. Staring at Ronan had become a daily observance which Ronan tolerated with inexplicable grace; that he'd finally been moved by the oddness of it to walk over and kiss him hadn't surprised Gansey in the least - only that it had taken him so long. He'd wanted to do more than stand there. He had. The trouble was knowing what  _more_  meant.

Because he knew about  _in love_ , from books. Knew it from his parents, too, in a way - they were calculated in their affection for one another as in everything, but still genuine as far as he was aware. Terrible timing, secrecy, awkwardness and tripping over his own feet notwithstanding, he recognised the situation with Blue as coming under the heading of  _in love_ , or at least  _probably in love_. He looked at her and thought about holding her hand. Things were brighter and better with her involved; he wanted to share his thoughts with her, even the ones that made her yell at him. Especially those ones, really, because he liked her fierceness and he enjoyed learning from her. She made his heart do things he'd read about.

Ronan made his heart do things he'd never read about. This heavy heat in his chest, the slow tearing sensation that came accompanied by an alarming litany of  _mine, mine, mine_ , the need to  _look_  at him all the time - they were mad things, uncategorisable. He wanted to pin Ronan to walls and then just -  _leave_  him there. That wasn't normal. If anything, it was even worse with Adam, because the features this new light threw into relief there were outright embarrassing: how the soft slope of his true accent when it slipped through his speech had probably always made Gansey's breath catch; the riveting competency of his slender, strong hands doing incomprehensible things to the workings of his car.  _I want him_ , Gansey thought experimentally about Adam, but the thought was followed immediately by  _to do what?_  and he had no answer for that.  _Fix me, maybe. Like the car._

 

*

 

"Gansey. I'm sparing your blushes. I'm protecting your innocence. I'm trying to tell you to get out of my room."

They'd been so busy - there was so much to do, to be done, to take care of - that time was passing in stretched and strange ways, running away from them, but over the past few days Ronan had still managed to mark moments as they flew by, like tagging something to watch again later. He ran them now, in the back of his mind; a mashup, a compilation. A book of short stories entitled  _I'm not awkward, you're awkward._

_One._  Adam, sitting next to Ronan on the couch; he waited until he could be sure Ronan was watching him, then tilted his head back slowly, slowly. It was an invitation, and in replaying it Ronan could see himself, too - the sharp slant of his expression, fascinated. He hadn't moved, and after a minute Adam had glanced over at Gansey and sort of shrugged. Gansey wasn't looking at either of them.

_Two._ Himself, in bed, alone, irritated, jerking off too fast just to get it over with, sparks and flashes of thoughts going off in the black of his brain before he could put them out,  _Gansey_ , no,  _Adam's voice_ , no  _fuck off_ , biting the words out loud to himself,  _fuck. off._ , and hearing a quick laugh; he'd opened his eyes to find Noah in front of his closed door. He'd started to say _what the fuck_ but Noah had said, "I wasn't watching," already fading out.

_Three_. He'd slept in Gansey's bed on and off the whole time they'd known each other, because Gansey wasn't private about it and sometimes you just didn't want to move, or get up, or you wanted to keep listening to him talk about his time in England, voice going hazy with sleep until it was more gentle white noise than speech. But he'd been going to his own room this time; from behind him, quiet, Gansey had said, "You'll stay in my bed tonight?" He'd nearly kept walking and slammed the door behind him; something about the tone of it, the maddening diffidence that kept it a question, had made him furious. In the end he'd turned around ready to strike, but Gansey had looked so tired and so hopeful and, _fuck the hell out of it_ , beautiful, face in shadow in the low light.

_Four_. Four was stupid; four was just catching himself and Adam both staring at Gansey like he'd invented the wheel. But Adam had clocked it at the same time and they'd both laughed, and then Gansey had looked up and assumed they were laughing at him, which had made it even better. It  _was_ stupid, but it had made for a warmth in him he'd almost thought he'd lost, something he associated with  _brothers_ , with  _family_ , with  _before_. Fucked up in context, but whatever.

Gansey was saying something. "What?"

"I said, do you actually want me to leave?"

Ronan stared at him and his brain suggested,  _stall for time_ , so he said, "I'm pretty sure you were talking for longer than that, but I wasn't listening to you then either," while he reran the conversation up to that point to make sure he'd made things clear enough.  _Ronan, what do you think about taking that infrared camera with us? Gansey, my door was shut, does that not mean anything any more? Sorry, but do you think it's a good idea?_ _I'm busy; come back in ten minutes. Come back in ten minutes for a yes or no answer? My fucking door was shut and I'm in bed! Yes, I can see that._

He should have paid more attention to Gansey's expression; he could see it now, the faint quirk of his mouth and his eyebrows raised just slightly too far. "It took me a while to frame the question. And do you?"

"Do I want you to leave?" His pulse was rocketing through him, he realised suddenly; beating through his bloodstream like it was trying to get out. He could feel it under his fingertips; he didn't dare move his hand.

"Yes, Ronan," Gansey said patiently, still with that look ( _S_ _ir, are you absolutely sure it's the dative and not the ablative?_  he'd had to bite down on his cheek to keep from laughing, Gansey had sounded so charming and been so magnetically superior and even back then he'd had to shove down the thought of what it would be like to have that expression turned on him) and his arm against the door frame, waiting.

Ronan swallowed. It hurt like he'd been choking. "Is Adam here?"

"Not right now." He didn't miss the regret in Gansey's voice, turning it soft, closer to an apology.  _Not without Adam._  They hadn't talked about that any more than they'd talked about any of the rest of whatever this was, but it was good to know for sure that it wasn't just him.

"Then come back in ten minutes and I'll talk about your camera." He shut his eyes to avoid seeing whether it would be relief or disappointment; either would be too much to deal with. The door closed quietly; two footsteps, a long silence, more footsteps.  _Jesus, Gansey_. Ten minutes was a generous fucking estimate.  _He knows what you're doing._  The thought went through him like a flaming bolt, lighting him up from the inside; his hand twisted around his cock, a reflexive, unkind movement that made him drag in breath through his teeth.  _He knows what you're doing_ , his brain whispered again.  _At least one of us does_ , he threw back, fighting hysteria - laughing now would disconcert Gansey so much it'd set the whole thing back three weeks.  _Not without Adam_. Would he want to? Would they both stand in the doorway, or lean against the wall, and watch him? It was probably ridiculous, but it was absolutely, definitely going to make him come. Gansey had wanted to stay. He swallowed a frantic sound and let his hand move faster, through the burn in his arm from having held still while they'd talked about cameras, about Adam, about whether Gansey was going to stay and watch him do this.

He shoved his head back against the pillow, strung wires of tension down his neck; any minute now.

_I bet he's got his fucking headphones on._ That was enough, he was sure it was true and it was so hopeless and so very, very Gansey, and he was coming and still trying not to laugh and breathing hard, hard, disaster-movie breathing, oxygen-mask breathing.  _Shit_. He rubbed his clean hand over his face, dragged the other one across his stomach and onto the bed. Glanced at the clock; four minutes; six minutes to wait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh my god, thank you guys for reading this and for the kudos and I can't believe people are reading something I'm writing this is crazy :xx sorry this took so long to post! I've been super ill & I have totally lost perspective on this chapter, I hope it is not terrible I'M SORRY THEY'RE TAKING SO LONG TO DO ANYTHING
> 
> NEXT TIME I PROMISE
> 
> GOD DAMN IT ADAM WHY ARE YOU SO BUSY


	4. Are your eyes showing off for mine?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> notes at the beginning this time because I want to point out that I have not yet read Blue Lily, and that from this chapter forward this is blatantly not compliant with canon because I am writing a fic about them all figuring out how to do things with and for each other and frankly I think in canon they probably won't all have time! because craziness, and bad guys, and Welsh kings :x
> 
> I hope that's okay and that you still like it and oh my god, thank you so much for reading and saying such lovely things and akdsjh okay. I promised you something would happen! here's something, happening. thanks for having a night off, Adam :x

Sometimes, Adam suspected they might be waiting for him. The possibility hung in his throat like sweet smoke, choking and lovely and complicated with a weird kind of nostalgia, as if it were  _we'll all be together again_  rather than  _what the hell are we doing?_. He often felt something like that, though, looking at the others - that they weren't only themselves but somehow every group of boys-plus-girl in an adventure story, chasing every quest, sealing every blood-brother pact. It made some things all the more unbearable; if they were fated to be together, a collective archetype echo, then it would take something seriously big to mess that up, and he nearly had, more than once. The others might hurt each other, might pull at or away from one another, but Adam was the only one who'd ever tried to walk away.

He let himself in to Monmouth, shivering. Cold struck him often these days, a resonant china cold somewhere under his skin, beyond his reach. Exhaustion, maybe, or some kind of post-traumatic winter. He wasn't ready for it to be that. In any case, Monmouth was several kinds of warm, and he wanted them all.

Ronan had Chainsaw on his shoulder, lending him a pronounced air of German Expressionist horror, although she spoiled the effect somewhat with her clicks and beaks of affection. Adam watched her, the soft flutter of her feathers dusting Ronan's cheek as he turned his head.  _I wouldn't dare touch him like that._  He wasn't sure what he meant, exactly - so lightly, maybe, so close, so freely. Ronan allowed much from his fellow animals he'd never tolerate from anyone human - except Noah, maybe, but then, what was Noah?

Whatever else he might be, Noah was sitting on Gansey's desk. "Adam." He pointed across the room as he said it, making it more an announcement to the others than a greeting. Adam raised a weary hand. It felt as heavy as a bowling ball.

"Adam!" Periodically Gansey would do that - salute them like old college friends not seen in years. Adam wished he didn't find it so sweet, because it also drove him crazy, reflected down as it surely was from Dick Gansey and all other Ganseys before him, but to have that gladness turned on you was something nobody could bear to complain about - even Ronan put up with it. Besides, it was honest; they knew that. He really was that happy to see them. It was hard to object to.

Gansey, in his chair, glasses on and his hair showing the results of a hand run through it repeatedly in frustration, looked like a cartoon of himself. His clothes were especially pastel and awful; Adam wanted to sink to the floor in front of him and bury his head in his lap. It was untenable.

"Can you make Ronan do his work? He just won't." But Gansey sounded indulgent - when he was serious, he'd shade through plaintive and into strained, desperate. Adam unshouldered his bag. It felt as heavy as two bowling balls. He put it down.

"Fuck," said Ronan, "Off. This is work."

"Parading around with your bird is schoolwork?"

 _Parading around with your bird_ , Adam repeated silently, and coughed down a laugh just as Noah caught his eye and made a sound of smothered amusement.

"I'm workshopping," Ronan said. "Catullus."

Gansey gave his Latin laugh, bold and delighted. " _Tecum ludere, sicut ipsa, possem, et tristis animi levare curas._ "

Ronan raised an eyebrow. " _Et acris solet incitare morsus_." He lifted his hand to stroke a finger over Chainsaw's hunched shoulders.

"I accepted that risk long ago."

Adam considered it, debated saying it,  _What are you talking about?_ , but he was too tired and it didn't matter and he still couldn't, somehow, bring himself to admit that kind of ignorance - not in the face of the casual tennis Ronan and Gansey tended to play with their academic knowledge. Not to people who could flirt in Latin poetry. Instead he walked over to Gansey's bed, kicked off his shoes. "You mind?" It came out of his mouth on a slant, accented.

"Of course not." Gansey peered at him, concerned. "You look all in."

"Nobody says that," said Noah, swinging his legs a bit. "You do, though."

"I am." Weariness pulled his vowels around, but he was too  _all in_  to care much. He rolled onto the bed, face down in the pillows, and stayed like that, letting words in the others' familiar voices pass over his head.  _Effectively_... _working on it_... _quoth the Ronan_... _getting that way_... _call her in the morning_... _worse than Helen_... _he's asleep._  "I'm not asleep," he mumbled into cotton.

"You were." Ronan. Adam willed his body to turn over, and eventually it obeyed. Ronan was standing over him, bright eyes, a flush of colour in his cheeks. "You were out for an hour," he said, and Adam glanced in panic for the clock on Gansey's desk. Ronan was right; his stomach lurched a little. It felt too much like losing time. He'd missed Noah leaving, too.

"Sorry," he said, so he didn't have to figure out what else to say. Ronan frowned, shrugged a dismissal; he hated Adam apologising for things.

"Don't be," Gansey's voice came from the doorway to the bathroom, and Adam turned to look and then bitterly wished he hadn't. There was soft light all over Gansey's face, catching gold-bronze in his hair, muting his horrible shirt. He looked like someone you dream of, Adam realised: not someone you  _try_  to dream of, or wish you could, but the kind of boy you meet while sleeping, who shares his drinks and poetry with you and feels more real than anything you see when you wake up, leaving you cheated, bereft. But he was right in front of them. Asking, "What?", because Adam was staring.

"Your Kennedy is showing," Ronan said with feeling from behind him. Gansey made a rueful noise, and then Ronan added, "I'm going to bed, if you want to come along."

Lead mask on his face, lead tongue in his mouth; Adam swallowed.  _Don't. Not and leave me out here._  From a distance, he watched Gansey's eyes widen, flicker to him. Already he could feel the phantom weight of his bag on his shoulder, the chill of his St. Agnes room. But staying out here all night, that would be worse.

Ronan poked him sharply in the shoulder. "You're invited too, you complete fucking idiot."

"We said we wouldn't - I mean, that there would be nothing. Without you." Gansey, conciliatory, hopeful. Adam couldn't keep up, couldn't begin to; he just nodded, and he'd known, really, but this was - now? This was happening now? But there he was, sitting up in Gansey's bed; there he was, putting his feet on a floor that against all probability was still there. Ronan met his eyes once, like a gunshot, a firework, and turned away, walking towards his bedroom door. Gansey appeared beside him, somehow; set one hand at his elbow, like he would to help somebody crossing the street. Adam felt like he needed it.

It seemed unreal, but Adam, who had been inside Ronan's dreams and held the fabric of them in his new unfamiliar hands, knew the difference. The floor was solid; Ronan's doorframe, immutable; the chaos of Ronan's room, as unsettling and true as ever. Ronan dragged his shirt off over his head and Adam felt his mouth dry all the way because the wanting, the sudden new needling desire he'd been feeling for Ronan lately - if it had focused on anything, it had been that devastation of a tattoo. He'd thought about touching it, dreamed about it, even; in the dream, which he tried not to think about, it had bitten him and he hadn't cared, had fed his blood to it, sweeping red across the marked skin and watching the black lines drink it up.

"Ronan," said Gansey quietly, still next to him. "Shall I close the door?"

Ronan shrugged, the swirls of ink moving with it. "Whatever. Wait, fuck, no, Chainsaw. Close it." In his peripheral vision, Adam saw the door shut, but he couldn't have turned away from the sight of Ronan kicking off his jeans and he heard Gansey exhale hard, too, like he'd bruised himself. Now that this was - now, there was no self-consciousness to any of Ronan's movements, which made it easier for Adam to ask, "What - I mean, what are we - doing, here?"

To his rare credit, Ronan didn't laugh. He did turn around, though; the only comfort Adam had in his inability to know where to look was that Gansey was almost certainly doing worse. "You're watching me get off."

"I was going to the other night," Gansey's voice in his ear, still soft, and  _low_ , a voice Adam had never heard on him before, unbearable, "But you weren't here, so we waited."

"I'm - okay?" Adam managed, finally turning his head to look at Gansey and curling his hand so his nails dug into his palm because, jesus, all he could think was  _that's what he looks like, that's what he looks like_ , all those high hereditary lines of Gansey's face turned riveted and coolly predatory but his eyes full of heat and wonder. He felt it in his heart, made himself look away; Ronan was already pulling the sheets over himself. Adam watched the smooth skin of his hip disappear from view and shook his head. "Okay. Okay."

"Is this all right?" Gansey; Ronan ignored him, so Adam assumed it must be his question to answer.

"Yeah. God - yeah. I just didn't - oh." It had only taken him saying  _yeah_ and then he could see Ronan's hand move under the sheets, the shape of his arm change; he'd always (for a long time, anyway) wanted to watch someone, anyone doing this because he was pretty sure everyone else had it worked out better than he did, so he'd thought about it often but never like this, never this close, never someone he cared so much about and craved like sugar or sleep. Heat flared all over him, disparate blooming points like an incident map. He wanted to reach for Gansey's hand, but he couldn't move, and touching skin right now would be too much; the shadow at Ronan's collarbone shifted rhythmically, mesmerising.

He was looking at them, Adam realised after a long moment of just watching that shadow; he glanced up to find Ronan's eyes on him, narrow and black, some kind of challenge. So he said, "Don't stop," and Ronan made a furious, roughed-up sound Adam felt all the way through himself, tilted his head further back to look at Gansey.

"Ronan," Gansey said like a prayer, "Don't.  _Don't_ stop."

Then they watched him in silence, except for Ronan's increasingly ragged breathing - he seemed to be the only one of them who  _could_ breathe, Adam felt like the surface of water, held all still - and he was something else, beautiful, a wild thing doing this for  _them_ , it was unbelievable any way you looked at it. Ronan bared his teeth like it was hurting him; Gansey made the slightest of sounds, Adam wanted to ask  _what, what would you do_ , and then that was all, Ronan swearing rapid-fire and violent, his body jackknifing under the sheets.

Still fighting to drag in air, Ronan looked right at Adam again and said, "You're next," and Adam felt himself nod, meant it. Bit his lip.  _I can do that. For them._

"Okay," he said. "All right."


	5. like I hate you when I love you the most

Ronan had expected Adam to have second thoughts or cold feet or whatever, but in fact when it came down to it - Adam lying worn in Gansey's bed, bone-tired and beautiful and saying  _I think I maybe want to_ \- it was Gansey who stepped back and politely excused himself.

"It's not at all that I don't want to be here, only this is all a little much." He had that distant, furrowed-brow thing that made Ronan seethe because it always meant he was having a private crisis, one he thought they wouldn't understand and that thus couldn't be shared with them. He waited for Adam to say something to that effect; he could usually be relied on, putting his quiet anger in front of Ronan's blacker extravagance like a forcefield. But Adam just smiled and said, "All right," soft and warm like summer dust, and he had his hand on Ronan's wrist, and Ronan didn't want to be angry next to that; he bit the inside of his mouth to keep himself shut up.

"Thank you," Gansey said with real gratitude - Ronan bit down harder - "I'll be in Noah's room." He was already moving away from them. He didn't look back, and he closed Noah's door behind him with extreme care, the kind that made Ronan wonder if he'd just be leaning against the other side of it, listening.  _Whatever_. Maybe it was something he wouldn't understand; probably anything that made you walk away from Adam Parrish in your bed was something he wouldn't understand.

"He doesn't want to be away from us," Adam was saying. Ronan turned back to him and made a noise of two parts, first  _yeah probably_ and then  _fucking look at you_ , because Adam was - he'd long since got bored of his brain trying to come up with words for what Adam was. What he wanted. Adam was what he wanted. Gansey, and Noah, but those were messed up and emotional and maybe this was getting that way too, but for a long time it had just been straight-fucking-forward lust, skin too tight, mouth dry and dick hard when he looked at him. He'd started out hating it - he was still jealous of Adam back then, still swallowing down his own ready cruelty (Gansey had heard him whistling 'Stand By Your Man' and rounded on him marble-white with fury;  _Ronan_ , he'd said and sounded horrified at both of them,  _don't_ , and so he hadn't, but he'd gone on wanting to for a long time) - but he'd grown to be glad of it, something simple in the mess of everything. Maybe he'd rather it hadn't been boys - he still wasn't sure, Kavinsky's words like a rash that wouldn't clear up - but at least having a crush on a friend was normal, in the face of a dead father who could dream flowers and a best friend who wanted to dig up kings.

_This summer, on Lifetime._

He'd been staring and he waited for Adam to do the thing he'd started doing when he caught Ronan looking: he'd lower his eyes some but he'd lift his chin, like he knew what Ronan was thinking and was shy of it, but still proud.  _There it is._ It suited the odd, ethereal lines of Adam's face so well that it tended to make Ronan briefly speechless, which he liked. There wasn't much that could do that. He remembered Adam a week or so back, with that same expression, asking,  _You dream about me?_ He'd said,  _you know I do_ , because Adam did know.  _I just wanted to hear it again._

Anyway. "He's probably listening."

"It's not about us," Adam said obliquely, far away for a moment. Ronan didn't care much; Gansey would tell them when he felt like it, and it was firmly and extremely his loss right now.

"You still going to?"

"Yeah," Adam sighed, by a long way the most obscene sound Ronan had ever heard come out of anyone's mouth but his own; hot wires knotted together in his stomach, a disaster of melting cables,  _fuck I want you so much_. "Might take me a while," Adam added apologetically; he was tracing his collarbone with one hand, back and forth, fingers brushing across the top of his fragile chest.

"Parrish, this is literally and fucking actually a dream come true. You...you do you," he managed with failing sarcasm.

Adam laughed anyway, breathless like that sigh. "I'm going to." He sounded blitzed and sort of distressed and he moved his hand slowly down, beneath the covers. Open-mouthed, hissing through his teeth, Ronan watched what was unquestionably Adam undoing his fly; he pictured Adam's stomach, shirt rucked up just enough to show it, and swore. Maybe he'd rather it hadn't been boys, but, shitdamn, boys were it.

Adam was quiet, but Ronan was very close to him, and so he felt each shift of blankets and heard it every time Adam breathed out trembling, every faint shallow sound that said  _this feels good, this feels good_. He'd have had to learn to be nearly silent, Ronan realised with a shot of lockjaw rage - his fucking worthless parents and their thin, thin walls between rooms, between each other, between precarious sanity and dirt ground into bruises. He pushed the thought away; they didn't think Adam could read minds - yet - but it was probably better not to take the chance.

It did take a while. It was warm, Adam was warm - Ronan felt himself zoning in and out, feeling what Adam was doing without seeing it, caught and lost in it like a spell or some other siren trap. He spared a thought for Gansey, patiently waiting; he had no idea how long it had been, five minutes, a half hour. Beside him, Adam said  _shit_ , his uncovered accent making it urgent, attention-seeking. Ronan forced himself to focus. Dream come true. He wasn't missing this. "You close?" he asked quietly, voice like gravel in his throat; Adam wasn't moving much faster, but his breathing was a mess.

Adam nodded, eyes fixed on the ceiling, mouth open like he was reaching for something. _If you could see yourself._   He wanted to show him, to hold a mirror up or just for Adam to look at him and see what this was  _doing_ to him, but - "I dream about you too," Adam said suddenly, critical and strained, and he was still saying it, over and over like it was hurting him,  _I dream about you too, I dream about you too,_ and of course he was coming, but Ronan only really felt it in the desperation crazing Adam's voice, the twitch of his hips so subtle it barely even shook the bed.  _Parrish._ He might have said it out loud; either way, Adam turned his head, finally, and made a small pained sound at whatever look was on Ronan's face.

"Hot," Ronan said pointedly, to head off the apology he was sure he could see making its way to Adam's mouth. 

"Right." He sounded dazed. Looked it, too. Ronan couldn't blame him; he felt high.

"Gansey?" He jerked his shoulder towards Noah's door, questioning. Adam nodded, more or less - ragdoll, exhausted. _He was tired even before,_ Ronan thought, and it made him angry in an obscure sort of way, so he raised his voice and called, "Is your gay panic over yet?"

The door opened more or less immediately.  _I knew it._ And angrier; it was directionless, though, pointless.  _What is your fucking malfunction?_  He wasn't sure which of them he meant. Gansey walked over to the bed without any particular sign of embarrassment, or disconcertment; Ronan watched Adam watch him come closer and gritted his teeth. Adam looked like he might cry, and even more so when Gansey reached down to brush his thumb through the faint sheen of sweat on his forehead. "Adam," Gansey said with the gentle amazement he usually reserved for an artefact out of the ground, and Ronan was done. He was careful, when he got up; Adam deserved this, better than to have him screw with it, definitely better than to have his fucking post-orgasmic glow trashed because Ronan was a spoilt fucking child. But he couldn't stay in the room with that, with Gansey saying Adam's name like he'd never known it before.

And Gansey did look up and ask, "All right?", but Ronan only had to tell the truth, he didn't have to answer the question. So he said, "Bathroom," which was true as far as it went, and by the time he came out again, Adam was asleep and Gansey was explaining the approximate rules of Tawlbwrdd to Noah for like the tenth time. He felt like the only wrong thing in the room. Which was business as usual enough that he could relax against it, could come and sit next to Noah and shove their shoulders together so Noah could say  _what_ and he could say  _what_ back until Gansey said _when you're finished_ ,exaggerated schoolteacher patience, and maybe whatever the hell was up with his brain would sort itself out if he didn't look right at it. If he didn't look right at anything except Noah, quietly cheerful, and the game board's old simplicity, and the bottle held easy in his hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had intended for this to be a longer chapter with more than one section, but I really wanted to get something posted tonight, so I hope this is enough?? for you guys because oh my god you're SO LOVELY, jfc thank you for still reading and I hope you like this also and yes
> 
> and then there'll be more soon, because Ronan is crazy. everyone is crazy. and I promise more Blue! it feels important to promise more Blue, I'm not neglecting her, she's just doing her own thing<3


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